10/30/09
Planning and Writing Your
Personal Statement
Match purpose to form: tell a story
that makes your argument
Features of a Good Statement
•  Find a defining moment to anchor story
•  Choose a fitting structure for your story
•  Use details to show instead of tell
•  Choose an appropriate tone
STRUCTURE AND LOGIC OF
YOUR NARRATIVE
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10/30/09
Crafting a story from your life:
events, qualities, goals
Personal
qualities
Other
events/
thoughts/
goals
Resume
experiences
A Story with an Argument
Choose components for narrative to reflect
an underlying causal argument:
Your life experiences, qualities, and goals
logically prepare you for and lead you to
this opportunity.
Portrait of the Author
as a Young . . . .
Not just a story about you, but a
story of your developing interest
and abilities in the area/
opportunity you are applying for
—
your intellectual autobiography
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Find a defining moment
•  Defining for you at that moment: epiphany
•  Defining only after further reflection
Structuring your narrative
•  Chronological order to events
•  Focus on particular event or phase, may
frame with event and flashback for
background
RHETORICAL FEATURES OF
PERSONAL STATEMENTS
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Focus today on two overall
categories of rhetorical features:
1.  Show instead of tell
2. Adopt the appropriate tone
1. Show instead of tell
(also avoid absolutes, cliches, and empty
statements)
Why is this feature so important?
•  to bring your story to life
•  to show your growth over time
•  to show connections among areas of your life
(personal, professional, academic)
•  to support your claims, not just assert them
Where does this feature emerge
in personal statements?
•  describing your experiences (focus on the
past, including defining moments)
•  presenting your interests (focus on the
present, where you are now)
•  explaining your goals (focus on the future)
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10/30/09
Examples of telling
•  It has always bothered me when people try to
define things.
•  I am a hard worker, always giving 110% to my
many clubs, athletic competitions and academic
endeavors.
•  From a very young age, I’ve loved science and
can’t imagine doing anything else as a career.
Showing, through details
•  However, to be honest, I have felt the siren call of theatre ever since a
fourteen-second performance as Clumsy Custard in my seventh grade
play, “The Clumsy Custard Horror Show.”
•  A lecture on smoking spurred me to face my own problem head-on
by enrolling in a student position with a smoking research
laboratory….After that, I could not help seeing the people behind the
statistics I was crunching everyday. The guy on the high-dose
nicotine patch smoking two packs a day was my roommate, and the
guy who had quit 15 times in the past month was me.
Showing through details:
an introductory paragraph
I don’t think I could have managed to be anything other than a
scientist. I was introduced to the natural world bare feet first on my
family farm in central Kentucky. Both of my parents have always
encouraged me to think critically about the world around me. In the
summer, I had crayfish in aquariums on the front porch and jars of
fireflies as night lights. As a child, I was never told that I asked too
many questions, or informed that I wouldn’t understand the answers.
I learned about photosynthesis snapping peas, my father helped me
build bat boxes so we could watch them eat bugs, and by the time I
entered kindergarten I knew just what I wanted to be: a field
biologist.
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10/30/09
Adopt the appropriate tone
(confident, not arrogant—think of jobapplication materials)
Why is this feature important?
•  helps create your persona as an applicant
Avoid an arrogant tone:
•  My record speaks for itself, and what it
says to me is that I can do great things if I
choose to.
Adopt an appropriate tone:
•  My honor’s thesis advisor calls me a
double threat: I’m intelligent and I’m also a
“save the world type.”
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10/30/09
Pay attention to the prompt
•  Don’t forget to look closely at the writing
instructions you are given for each
personal statement you write, including
any specific questions and length
requirements.
Reading your own draft
•  Enlist other readers, but be a critical reader for
yourself.
•  Write questions and comments in the margin
as you read to prompt revision.
•  Save separate versions (you may want to
reclaim material you deleted earlier).
•  Make regular appointments with others as you
revise.
Put together a team to help you
•  Find an advisor/mentor with expertise in
your field of study who can offer
contextualized advice on your statement.
•  Seek out multiple readers for multiple
drafts.
•  Get help on language and rhetoric from the
Writing Center: 123 Cherry Hall, 745-5719
www.wku.edu/writingcenter
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